The Game Druid

s more and more Xbox 360 owners download the New Xbox Experience, more and more will begin performing full game installs. The feature, just one of several in the dashboard-redesigning, Avatar-imposing, top-to-bottom update, allows gamers to rip an entire game onto their Xbox 360 hard drive. With no spinning disc, the console’s high-speed DVD drive will fall silent, reducing the console’s infamous noisiness. (Note: The game disc must be inserted for authentication purposes, but does not have to spin.)

Another assumed benefit of full installs is improved load times, a very desirable upgrade in titles with many locations and saves such as Fallout 3. However, the makers of one massively popular hit are urging its millions of players to act counter-intuitively and not to rip games onto the 360’s HDD.

Today on the now-independent studio’s official Web site, Bungie chief caching officer Mat Noguchi posted a length explanation about why fully installing Halo 3 will lead to “significantly longer” load times.

“When Halo 3 runs, if a HDD is present, we copy maps from the DVD to the utility partition (on the HDD),” said the engineer. “Think of it as an on demand install of Halo 3 to some scratch space on the HDD. Halo 3 doesn’t actually know where it’s running from, so it always assumes it’s running from a DVD. …And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.” Ipso facto, the load times increase.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like Bungie will have a patch ready soon–if ever–to fix the problem. “It would be a significant undertaking to try and retroactively patch/update Halo 3 to be optimized to take advantage of the HDD install features of NXE,” summarized Noguchi. “The risks of doing that and the resources required has to be carefully considered against what could really be a rather insignificant change to the player experience. For now our team is focused on making great games for the future like Halo 3: Recon and other unannounced projects but we will continue to monitor this situation.”

Between the five-for-one megacompilation better known as The Orange Box and the $100, 22-game Complete Pack, Valve knows a thing or two about giving gamers a good deal. With the release of the original Half-Life 10 years ago to the day, Valve is once again relying on its proven bargain-hunter strategy by practically giving the hallmark shooter away.

Valve has announced that beginning today, gamers can purchase the original Half-Life through its online distribution service Steam for $0.98. For the record, that’s a $9.01 savings over Valve’s previous asking price of $9.99. The offer is good until 12:01 p.m. PST on November 21.

A seminal first-person shooter in its own right, Valve’s Half-Life won more than 50 Game of the Year awards upon its release in 1998 and spawned a franchise that would go on to sell in excess of 20 million units. The game has also been named one of GameSpot’s Greatest Games of All-Time, thanks in large part to the way it told its story, as well as the now-standard use of scripted events. Oh, and a lot of people thought it wasn’t a half-bad shooter, either.

Wanna know what happened?

a Texas jury this week found the PlayStation Portable and a smattering of the company’s other electronics in violation of an Agere Systems patent for storing headers in music files on a memory chip. As reported by the Tyler Morning Telegraph, the jury found that Sony willfully infringed on the patent, and it awarded Agere compensatory royalties of $18.5 million.

When the suit was originally filed in March of 2006, it included infringement claims for seven other patents, with the slate of complaints being whittled down over the intervening years. Also since the filing of the suit, Agere Systems has ceased to exist, having merged with silicon and software tech firm LSI Corporation in 2007.

Sony is no stranger to the penalties of patent infringement. In 2005, a judge ordered Sony to fork over $90 million to Immersion Corporation for infringing on patents the company holds in creating the vibration function of its DualShock controllers for the PlayStation and PlayStation 2. While Sony opted to leave rumble out of its original Sixaxis PlayStation 3 controller, it eventually repaired its bridges with Immersion and licensed the technology for the DualShock 3.

well its quite a no brainier really, the September sales numbers are in and while the Wii once again dominated console sales, the Xbox 360 has continued to pick up steam since its price drop and is building a bigger lead over the PlayStation 3.

Microsoft’s strategy to drop the price of the Xbox 360 appears to be paying off, but because of the dip in the financial markets in the U.S., the console systems still might not be flying off the shelves as quickly as Microsoft expected.

However, they have to be more dismayed to see that Nintendo will enjoy the most sales again this time around. Still, not all of the holiday season cards have been played yet, and we are still expecting to see Microsoft move ahead of Nintendo in total sales for the upcoming holiday season. The momentum that the Wii continues to enjoy can’t last forever with its lack of titles on the platform.

In other Xbox 360 news, Microsoft has announced that the Rockstar classic Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas from the original Xbox platform will become available starting October 20th for download as part of the Microsoft Xbox Originals downloadable catalog.

While you will be able to download it for 1200 Microsoft Points in the U.S. on October 20th, it is currently unknown when it will be available for download in other regions, but current plans call for it to happen; it is just a question of when.

Should Nintendo fear the latest Xbox 360 price cut? Well, the Japanese firm is in total control, according to analyst Jesse Divinich:

“Nintendo need not worry about Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter,” Divnich said plainly. “Nintendo will always be its own worst enemy (in terms of keeping up with demand). Nintendo has so much wiggle room on the Wii’s pricing that they will never be afraid of a competitor trying to use price as a differentiating feature.

“If they ever felt threatened, they could drop the Wii down to $149 and destroy a competitors momentum. But in this particular case, Nintendo won’t feel too threatened by an Xbox 360 price drop.”

This is interesting….Raptr, a social gaming network founded by the creator of Xfire which was purchased by Viacom for $102 million has launched its open public beta. News reports also reveal that the new venture also raised a massive $12 million from investors back in February, so this could be the next big thing…

So we’ve seen Glinkster and now Raptr. Wonder whats next?

Yay! So i’m finally getting my 1 mbps connection at home today!! it’s gonna be awesome!! Will give a review once I have played with it and twisted it and tested it.

This is the plan I opted for

HOME 2222 Plus (Residential)

It’s official: Activision Inc. and Vivendi Games are now defunct nomenclature. After shareholders handily signed off on the merger at a meeting yesterday, French megacorp Vivendi SA and Activision said today that they had completed the transaction to create Activision Blizzard. The newly formed company will retain Activision’s current headquarters in Santa Monica, California.

“We have created the world leader in online and console games with this transaction, and the combined strengths of the two businesses offer immense growth potential,” gushed Vivendi SA CEO Jean-Bernard Levy. “I am also very confident that, with the new leadership team in place, the new entity is perfectly positioned to take advantage of these rapidly developing markets across the globe.”

Former top Activision man and newly installed Activision Blizzard president and CEO Robert Kotick issued an equally glowing statement, vaunting the publisher’s prime position in the console and online PC space. “With more than 10.7 million subscribers on World of Warcraft, and with tens of millions of people playing Guitar Hero, Activision Blizzard’s games are transcending the traditional stereotypes and are more popular as a form of entertainment than ever before,” he said. “We look forward to building upon our brands to create value for our shareholders, customers, and consumers.”

With the merger now closed, Activision Blizzard is expected to surpass publishing kingpin Electronic Arts as the world’s most lucrative third-party game-software publisher. As per today’s announcement, the business combination brings together a number of top-selling franchises under one roof. Considering statistics from a variety of global stat-tracking organizations, those number-one ranked brands include Guitar Hero for family entertainment and music-based gaming, World of Warcraft in subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing games, Spider-Man in superhero games, Tony Hawk in the action sports genre, Cabela’s in sports hunting, and Call of Duty in first-person action.

As per the original terms of the deal first announced in December, Vivendi SA has contributed the entirety of its Vivendi Games subdivision–worth $8.1 billion–as well as $1.7 billion to acquire a 52 percent controlling stake in Activision Blizzard. The French megacorp will in the next few days attempt to expand its hold to a possible 68 percent through a $4 billion all-cash tender offer, made to current Activision shareholders at the agreed-upon price of $27.50 per share.

Although that buyout offer was a handsome premium on Activision’s approximately $21-per-share sticker price in December, it is unlikely that Vivendi will find many takers in the present. Activision’s stock has maintained a steady climb since the merger was initially announced, and as of press time today, the publisher’s stock was trading in excess of $32 on the NASDAQ exchange. Activision Blizzard will continue to operate as a publicly traded company on NASDAQ under the ATVI ticker symbol after the merger.

Surprised anyone? Not really I would say, becuase the game is SO FRIGGIN awesome!! It’s actually the feeling of being mmmm.. God like? that makes it so cool. Sure, you had tons of other games like black and white and civilization and stuff, but yeah, this gives you so much MORE!

Anyway, according to Voodoo Extreme, here’s the top ten list of games:

• 1. Spore Creature Creator - Electronic Arts
• 2. The Sims 2 Double Deluxe - Electronic Arts
• 3. Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures - Funcom/Eidos
• 4. World Of Warcraft: Burning Crusade - Blizzard
• 5. World Of Warcraft - Blizzard
• 6. World Of Warcraft: Battle Chest - Blizzard
• 7. The Sims 2 FreeTime - Electronic Arts
• 8. The Sims 2 Kitchen & Bath Interior Design Stuff - Electronic Arts
• 9. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Activision
• 10. Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures - LucasArts

Enjoi

The Game Druid

Rats - that reminds me to upload the Spore videos and finish the Sims 2 review

I’ve said this a million times, Wii IS next gen! Recently a Reuters report came out saying that the Wii out sould the PS3 despite its 700% increase in sales, in Japan though. In a piece headlined “Sony PS3 catching up to Wii in Japanese sales,” Reuters’ Tokyo branch covers the horse race, writing that the Wii “once again outsold Sony Corp’s PlayStation 3 in Japan in June, but its lead is fading.” While technically accurate if referring to monthly sales – the Wii only outsold the PS3 by a margin of 1.7 to 1 last month, a dip from the 6 to 1 margin of the previous month – the bigger picture isn’t so clear.

so this is totally turning out to be 2 console race (sorry 360 ), anyway, i wonder whats gonna happen next, cuz I don’t see any game on the PS3 coming soon which will create a boom like MGS 4.. and no GT5 doesn’t count.